Automatic relevance detection in the absence of a functional amygdala

▸ We investigate two patients with complete and specific amygdala lesions due to Urbach-Wiethe syndrome. ▸ In an emotional attentional blink task, they show no impairment of automatic relevance detection. ▸ This opposes earlier findings of a patient with surgical temporal lobe lesion in adulthood. ▸ Cortical and thalamic visual areas might support prioritised resource allocation in the absence of a functioning amygdala.